TY  - Type of reference 
TI  - The roads and thermokarsts as evidence of soil and morphosedimentary changes in chalky Champagne: the example of the Faux-Fresnay site “Le Haut des Taupinières” (Marne, France) 
AU  - Adrien Gonnet
 
AU  - Vincent Riquier 
AB  - While the geoarchaeological approach of a settlement usually focuses on sedimentary storage areas such as dry valleys or anthropogenic structures to understand the soil archives, roadways or natural thermokarst-type depressions can also be a source of information for pedologists and geomorphologists. Thus, the Faux-Fresnay site “Le Haut des Taupinières,” excavated by the French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Researches (INRAP) in 2019 over an area of 10 hectares, offers new perspectives for documenting the major phases of pedogenesis and soil truncations, particularly through the presence of a medieval road axis that has preserved the Holocene rendosol horizons. This rendosol, also preserved within a dry valley and thermokarst depressions inherited from the Pleistocene, has been occupied by human societies since the Bronze Age and, like the rest of the site, has undergone multiphase and diachronic erosion. The colluvium stored in the thermokarst depressions regularly undergo renewed pedogenesis, suggesting a rhythmicity of erosion/sedimentation processes and a succession of periods of soil stability and instability. To characterize Holocene pedogenesis and to evaluate the different phases of erosion at the site, the geoarchaeological study is based on pedostratigraphic transects, geochemical analyses (measurement of organic matter and carbonates), and relative dating provided by anthropogenic structures, whether excavated or not, preserving these soil horizons as soil archives. Those anthropogenic structures and the relative dating they provide highlight, in particular, an initial phase of erosion following the Late Bronze Age occupation at Faux-Fresnay, followed by an acceleration of erosion processes during the second half of the Subatlantic period, linked to mechanized agriculture. The use of an ancient roadway as evidence of periods of erosion/sedimentation on a regional scale can also be extended to other archaeological, geomorphological, and pedological contexts. Thus, it is possible recontextualize these events at regional scale through other examples of more recent, sometimes modern to contemporary, roadways that have preserved ancient soils and bear witness to accelerated colluvial morphogenesis over more than half a century. 
DO  - 10.21494/ISTE.OP.2025.1383 
JF  - Archaeology, Society and Environment 
KW  - Champagne, Roads, Rendosols, Erosion, Geomorphological dynamics, Bronze Age, Champagne, axes viaires, Rendosols, érosion, dynamiques géomorphologiques, âge du Bronze,  
L1  - https://www.openscience.fr/IMG/pdf/iste_ase25v5n1_6.pdf 
LA  - en 
PB  - ISTE OpenScience 
DA  - 2025/10/22 
SN  - 2752-4507 
TT  - Les axes viaires et les thermokarsts comme témoins des évolutions pédo- et morphosédimentaires en Champagne crayeuse : l’exemple du site de Faux-Fresnay « Le Haut des Taupinières » (Marne, France) 
UR  - https://www.openscience.fr/The-roads-and-thermokarsts-as-evidence-of-soil-and-morphosedimentary-changes-in 
IS  - Issue 1 
VL  - 5 
ER  -